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Articles by Melanie Gay

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About Melanie Gay

A former literary agent with three published novels of her own, Melanie retains her life-long love of the written word and recently mastered the Kindle. She is currently writing a historical novel set in 17th Century Britain and Holland. More Posts

The Heath /Hunter Davies

The Heath is a vade mecum by writer and journalist Hunter Davies of a year in the life of Hampstead Heath (2019-2020). The author, born in Cumbria, has lived most of his life in Hampstead and is therefore well-qualified to give this well written, enthusiastic and informative account. He covers the [...]

April 19, 2023 // 0 Comments

Manderley Forever/Tatiana de Rosnay

My immediate reaction upon reading Tatiana de Rosnay’s biography of Daphne du Maurier is do we need another one? Margaret Forster has written the definitive biography. Justine Picardie’s Daphne covers a critical period in her life when the latter was under time pressure to produce a biography [...]

March 29, 2023 // 0 Comments

Reappraising Jane Austen

In a previous post I was rather negative about the Jane Austen novel Persuasion.   In last week ‘s edition of Radio 4’s In Our Time various academics discussed its importance and made many good points that I had missed on the characterisation, observation and depiction of Bath. Here is a link [...]

December 25, 2022 // 0 Comments

Bournville/Jonathan Coe

Jonathan Coe is emerging as the chronicler of our times. In his latest novel Bournville he traces the origins of Brexit back to VE Day – and subsequent noteworthy events thereafter – as seen through the eyes of the Lamb family who live in the Bournville suburb of Birmingham an utopian [...]

November 16, 2022 // 0 Comments

The Romantic/William Boyd

You never what to expect in a William Boyd novel but – like Any Human Heart – this is a sweeping cradle-to-grave story of Cashel Ross set in the nineteenth century. Cashel was born in Cork. He was told his parents had died when their boat capsized and he was brought up by his Scottish [...]

November 3, 2022 // 0 Comments

Petworth Literary Festival/Simon Sebag Montefiore

Yesterday I attended the Petworth Literary Festival where Simon Sebag Montefiore was interviewed by Davide Soskin about his new book The World.    This is a history of the world through families. His thesis is that the treatment of history is too narrow – whether of a country or a [...]

October 31, 2022 // 0 Comments

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont

This 1971 novel by Elizabeth Taylor – her eleventh – short-listed for the Booker Prize [images herein taken from the 2005 US-produced movie version of the same name directed by Dan Ireland with a largely-British cast list headed by Joan Plowright as Mrs Palfrey and Rupert Friend as [...]

October 24, 2022 // 0 Comments

Sense and Sensibility (1995)/director Ang Lee

My comment that Jane Austen is better enjoyed by film than book were tested by this 1995 film directed by the esteemed Korean director Ang  Lee. It had a strong cast of Hugh Grant, Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson, Imelda Staunton, Elizabeth Spriggs, Robert Hardy, Harriet Walter, Tom Wilkinson, Alan [...]

September 9, 2022 // 0 Comments

Persuasion/Jane Austen

Reading this classic novel raises the question of the extent to which any reader can appreciate a book of little relevance to our times. Jane Austen’s world is the one of the genteel aristocracy – privileged, snobbish, devoid of work – where ambition is social and gossip peddled. It [...]

September 2, 2022 // 0 Comments

Michel Houllebecq and Jane Austen

I have just finished Lanzarote by Michel Houellebecq. It’s a novella of less than 80 pages and contains his normal themes of sex obsession and mass tourism. The story – such as it is – is that Michel, refusing to go to a Muslim country, decides on Lanzarote the Canary Island for a [...]

August 23, 2022 // 0 Comments

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